With Or Without You

8.

Teja's POV:

The sun's properly up now, starbursting on the windscreen, making me squint even with my sunglasses on. The road ahead looks kind of dusty through it, like everything needs a wipe.

Karan hasn't said a word for over half an hour and having him in this car is making it hard to breathe. He still wears the same aftershave. Light and woody, a hint of orange.

'I'm actually a very modern man, thank you very much,' Advik is telling Aahana.

She just called him a caveman.

He said something sexist that I didn't catch, which is probably for the best.

'Oh, yes?'

'You know what I did the other day?'

'What?'

'I moisturised.'

I have to bite back a smile. I forgot this about him. How charming he is, when he wants to be.

'Let's play a game,' Naina says suddenly. 'I'm bored.'

'Only boring people get bored,' Advik says.

'Only boring people say that,' Naina corrects him.

Advik rolls his eyes and says, 'Five questions. I'll go first. Ask me anything. Go on.'

'What's the worst thing you've ever done?' Naina asks promptly.

He snorts. 'Which particular social construct would you like me to measure "worst" by? I don't really subscribe to a standard system of morality.'

'How very exciting of you,' Aahana says flatly.

Advik looks put out. 'I caught and cooked one of our neighbour's pets, once,' he says after a moment. 'Will that do?'

There is a collective gasp.

'That's – that's awful!' exclaims Naina. 'Why?'

Adviik shrugs. 'There wasn't anything to eat.'

'You ate it?' Naina says, and I can hear her shrinking back into her seat.

'With garlic sauce. Next question?'

'Have you ever been in love?' Aahana asks. 'Or does that not fit into your nonstandard system of morality?'

The silence stretches too tight. I don't look at Karan.

'I fall in love a hundred times a month, darling,' Advik says lightly.

'Didn't expect anything less of you'

I might be mistaken but a flicker of emotion passes through his eyes, too quick for me to decipher.

'What's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone else?' Karan asks.

Advik furrows his brows in confusion and proceeds to glare intently at Karan, 'This. Your fly's open'

I can feel the heat making its way to my cheeks as Karan immediately glances towards it.

Advik claps his hand in victory, 'Ha, I made you look.'

I groan and close my eyes. This is not how this weekend was supposed to go. Why am I not at home gorging on junk while watching netflix? That was the plan. And that sounds so good right now.

I watch as Karan gets up to take a bag out of the compartment above. His T-shirt rises up showing his perfectly toned muscles. He looks too good – it hurts. I turn away, staring out at the traffic as I try to calm down my racing heart.

This is dangerous. For a split second there, as I watched him carrying out an action as normal as lifting his luggage, I didn't mind missing out on netflix and chill with my sister. I wanted to be here. With him.

*****

Karan's POV:

By now we are on I-4, and traffic is fairly light, which in and of itself is borderline miraculous. We're in the far left lane driving eight miles an hour over the fifty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit, because I heard once that you don't get pulled over until you're going nine miles an hour over the speed limit.

I look around and see that everyone's settled in their roles pretty quickly.

Naina's reading a book. Aahana's on her phone. Hiya's doing her nails. Teja's listening to music.

And Advik? Advik's role is to need to pee. At first it seems like his main role is going to be complaining about how we don't have any CDs and that all the radio stations in Hawaii suck. But soon enough, he abandons that role for his true and faithful calling: needing to pee.

"I need to pee," he says at 3:06.

We've been on the road for two hours.

"Well," says the driver, "the good news is that we will be stopping. The bad news is that it won't be for another four hours and thirty minutes."

"I think I can hold it," Advik says. At 3:10, he announces, "Actually, I really need to pee. Really."

The chorus responds, "Hold it." He says, "But I—" And the chorus responds again, "Hold it!" It is fun, for now, Advik needing to pee and us needing him to hold it. He is laughing, and complaining that laughing makes him need to pee more. Hiya jumps forward and leans in behind him and starts tickling at his sides. He laughs and whines and I laugh, too. Glancing at Teja, I wonder if this journey was constructed for us on purpose or by accident—regardless, it's the most fun I've had since the last time I spent hours behind the wheel of a minivan.

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A/N: I know y'all want things to progress faster but I don't want to rush anything. This is a slow-paced novel and I just want to go with the flow. You're gonna get to see a lot of them in the coming chapters but I would request you to wait patiently for that.

Also, I know I talk a lot about all the other characters and I want to continue doing that. I've read a lot of #TejRan fanfictions over here but I've never read one which actually gives depth to their respective supporting characters. They're either used as a way of communication or to add a fun element to the novel. Don't get me wrong, I love that but I like to challenge myself as well. So, each of the characters of my novel are gonna have their own story to offer. It's possible that a lot of you might not like it much but I hope you respect my choice nonetheless.

Having said that, thank you for reading and please show your love on this chapter by way of voting, commenting and sharing.

Until next time.

Lots of love,

D